


Unrequited

by ackermansheart



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Eremika - Freeform, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-02-07 08:40:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21455176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ackermansheart/pseuds/ackermansheart
Summary: ...For a moment, he wonders, that if the world knew how he crumbled beneath it, sacrificed everything just to save it, if he may be forgiven for what he has to tell her. And he’ll mourn for what he cannot.Eren, Mikasa, and 123.
Relationships: Mikasa Ackerman/Eren Yeager
Comments: 8
Kudos: 60





	Unrequited

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, chapter 123 left some huge holes and gaps in my heart and soul, and they needed to be filled. I threw in a little extra so read with care. Any mistakes are mine

_‘Why do you concern yourself so much with me?’ _

Desperation fills his lungs in the words that tumble from his lips, and he swears that if he takes one more breath, he’ll surely drown. Her presence was becoming too much— she was too much, when her eyes and the weight of the question he’s just asked her lingers in the air between them.

Distressed eyes focus on a point in the distance, somewhere over his shoulder, before flitting back to the ground with her answer. He knows by the tears that thicken with each blink of her lashes against pink petalled cheeks; by the way she hasn’t released a breath in several moments. By the way that, no matter how long he yearns for her truth, she would never let that barrier fall from between them. 

Not so long as they were stuck here, in this place. Not so long as he was stuck as a puppet to himself— a gatekeeper for the rest of the monsters that lie in wake of the world.

Even if Eren knew that he, himself, was the scariest of them all.

_ **How else do you destroy a monster without becoming one? ** _

Perhaps that was why he was so insistent, now, for her words to quell that fear inside of him. That fear of making those same mistakes as the ones before him.

Because maybe it was only her who made him feel the least bit of a human. It was only her who could change the way that he is. Because no matter how far he’s been sucked into the void of his own mind, no matter how many other voices clogged the paths, Mikasa was always there, waiting to pull him back up and into that safe sense of clarity that only she could provide. 

He thinks— no, _he knows_— that she knows him better than anyone. But why, then, did he fear that he might not know her anymore? Like that girl turned woman before his very eyes was someone now warped into a symbol of something more… intimate. 

“Is it because I saved you?” He asks, and briefly wonders if she can hear the pain with each inflection that drips passed his lips. “Is it because... I’m family?”

Mikasa’s eyes finally snap to his, muted blues fading into a muddy black. The weight of his words falls heavy on her shoulders and he can see it in the way her face flushes. Her cheeks bleed rubescent as soon as he feels his own warm in return, and he swallows back the lump in his throat at the sight of her standing there speechless.

"What am I to you?"

He wonders, then, If maybe he shouldn’t have asked her that question. There’s a furious shift in the wind, one where you have to dip your head and shield your face in order not to get bolstered with something akin to shame, and it flicks at his cheeks furiously. 

He notices the weight between her brows, notices the glint at the corner of her eyes, and then he realizes... that she wants to say something.

But she doesn’t. Not for several moments. Not until, he figures, she has the courage to lift her eyes back towards him. They shimmered, now, and he tries to ignore the glint that flecks at her lash line.

“You’re...” She hesitates. “_Famil_—“ But the hesitance is so palpable that the silence that follows her shaken voice is jarring. Because she doesn’t continue, her words clipping off as if her tongue becomes too heavy behind her teeth. Too thick in her throat, perhaps, like his felt right now. 

He doesn’t know how long they stand in the silence, in the wind and things unsaid stirring within the air between them. Seeing her now, pleading and panicked and stepping away, he wonders how he’ll ever find strength again without her. 

“Why?” 

There is a tense loom after that, where the moon seems to lower and highlight the curves of her face in an intimidating light. Mikasa’s brows furrow and her eyes harden and he swears he sees decades worth of pain flit between them. 

“You… why?” 

At her words, at her stare, at her own desperate plea of admission, Eren thinks, that for one of the first times in his life, he is afraid of her.

“I—“ but she has, yet again, stumped him. Because he cannot predict her next moves, like he may in the battlefield. Instead, she leaves him perplexed, looking for the answer inside of himself instead of from her.

“I shouldn’t have said that to you. I shouldn’t have asked. I—“

_“Eren.”_ Firmer, now, her voice grasps him like a vice. His eyes, already wavering between the two of her own, searches her face. “Why?” 

“Why now?”

The questions, as much as it isn’t for her to be faulted, feels jarring. 

He holds onto the thoughts that seem to consistently haunt him, and relishes in them for only a few short moments before pushing them away. He can feel Mikasa’s stare, bold and brash and unafraid, that he can't bring himself to look at her.

Here he was, with the world on his shoulders and a woman that looked at him with so much reverence, so much agony— so much reluctance, an intense instinct to pull away from him when he tugs for her sleeve. 

For a moment, he wonders, that if the world knew how he crumbled beneath it, sacrificed everything just to save it, if he may be forgiven for what he has to tell her. And he’ll mourn for what he cannot. 

“Because…” he starts, slow and breathy and… “Because I can’t lose you. When all this is over, after it’s all done, I can’t lose you, too.”

Mikasa’s body stiffens in response, and he can feel the conflicting emotions inside of her. So many of his own pass through himself that he cannot distinguish them, but only feel them all within their own kind of intensity. 

“Something good should come out of this. It can’t have all been for nothing.”

Fear flashes across her eyes, and something he knows all too well. Betrayal, pain, the likeness and desire to never feel it again.

“Promise me you’ll keep fighting.” 

_Even if I’m gone._

“Why?” 

_Because I have to go._

A rush of emotions slams into him all at once, and he begins to feel desperation rising. It makes him want to scream, and kick, and cry and act like a petulant child who isn’t getting his way. He wanted to throw a fit, throw himself into her arms and let her tell him everything is going to be okay, until her gentle touch and voice lulled him off to a place where he wasn’t left to kill anyone with his bare hands. 

“No matter what, okay? I need you to promise me that you’re going to fight.”

He needed to hear her say it. He needed to hear that she was going to try. That she was going to live out her life, despite what he may do to her. That she needed to fight. If she didn’t, it would all be for nothing, and everything he’s worked to protect and hold dear would fall through his fingertips. 

_She needed to survive._

Mikasa doesn’t say anything, but only because she doesn’t have to. He can feel the string between them, tethered and worn, begin to fray. 

Before he can think about it, before it can eat away at his entire soul, he’s jostled aside, and a man with a tray full of wines doesn’t know he has just ended a lifetime worth of unforgiving moments.

Eren lets that same hollow settle in his stomach, lets it wrap cool fingers around his throat, and embraces it with a scoff. “Perfect timing.”

**Author's Note:**

> the biggest oof
> 
> my tumblr @ackermansheart


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